Florida Coastal may refund students money under new program

The school would return part of the tuition, provided conditions are met.

Florida Coast School of Law students are pictured working on the practice Florida Bar exam in this file photo.

Leaders at Florida Coastal School of Law are confident they can train students to get legal jobs. So confident that now they’re willing to put money on it.

Under a new program starting this fall, the Jacksonville law school will refund students a portion of their tuition. If a student flunks out after year one or can’t pass the bar on their second try, the school will refund $10,000 of the $40,000 annual tuition. During the three years of school, if a student does not land an internship, Florida Coastal will refund $2,000.

There’s a catch.

Students must be full-time in order to enroll and they must adhere to a long list of stipulations. Some of them include:

- Attend all writing workshops during the first semester.

- Complete the grammar program administered by the academic advisers.

- Receive a passing grade in Law School Foundations class.

- Attend 95 percent of the bar coach program sessions.

- Complete a simulated bar exam from the academic advising office.

C. Peter Goplerud, the school’s dean, said the program is a good marketing tool in what has become a competitive push for a declining number of students interested in law school. Goplerud said hopes to never give back a dime. However, recent numbers from the school suggest Florida Coastal will be sending out refunds when the program premiers.

From 2008 and 2012, there were 330 Florida Coastal students who graduated, but didn’t pass the Florida bar exam. In that same time period, anywhere from 40 to 60 students dropped out in their first year.

As a sample, in 2011-12, Florida Coastal had 84 students who flunked out after one year.

“If all 84 of those students adhered to the Assured Outcomes Partnership, the school would be required to pay $840,000 and we would be accountable for that,” said Brooks Terry, the school’s spokesman. “That’s the level at which we are prepared to truly partner with our students.”

Terry said that year, the school had 37 students who didn’t pass the bar exam on their second try. The school doesn’t know if the 37 are all new graduates, who would have had the opportunity to receive $10,000, or if some include past alumni retaking the bar.

Florida Coastal decided on a $10,000 amount, Goplerud said, because college officials can keep a big percentage and still give back an amount.

Florida Coastal’s program rolls out at a time when the country is seeing plummeting applications in law schools and higher tuition at public and private law schools. Data from the Law School Admission Council show that only 27,891 people have applied for law school in America, down from 100,000 in 2004.

Experts in legal education believe the decline stems from students doing a cost-benefits analysis and finding that tuition costs too much and the likelihood of getting a great job after graduation is slim-to-none.

The American Bar Association released a study last spring that found only 55 percent of students in 2011 who graduated and passed the bar exam found full-time jobs that require their recently acquired education.

Nationally, law school tuition has risen anywhere from 5 to 9 percent since 1985, according to the American Bar Association. Tuition at Florida Coastal for 2006-07 was $28,500 and they’ve increased it about 5 percent every year since.

Nearby law school Stetson University does not have a refund program like Florida Coastal, a spokeswoman said, but wouldn’t respond when asked if the college had heard of a program like this before.

Still, Goplerud said he has faith in the program as long as students are working hard in their classes.

“If they do all the things they’re suppose to, we’re not going to be doing anything except saluting successful graduates,” he said.

The program does not apply to students already enrolled at Florida Coastal, students like Stefano Portigliati, 26, of Orlando.

Portigliati said it doesn’t bother him that he can’t enroll in the program. In his years at Florida Coastal, the administration has introduced new things that he and upperclassmen have taken advantage of, but “this one we don’t get to benefit from.”

Some upperclassmen who have heard about the program, Portigliati said, have critiqued it, saying “the requirements may be a little too much.”

“But I think they are things a student should do anyway; they’re all things I did,” Portigliati said.